Tag: bosnia

Even though some three months have passed since DebConf11 has successfully ended, I still wanted to give you just a glimpse on how some parts were played through the eyes of a lunatic (read: organizer). Of course, blog post can’t come close near of explaining anything but at least it should give some insight and hopefully some pointers to the future DebConf organizers.

If you don’t feel like reading this much text you can listen to last episode of “This Week In Debian” podcast and after it just head to “Beginning of the end” part.

DebConf11

First of all I’d like to apologize if I offended or hurt anyone in this whole process as it wasn’t my intention and during DebConf organization this is nothing irregular, for you to get hurt or you hurting somebody else. One thing that got stuck with me this whole time is when Martín Ferrari approached me after I did bid proposal of Bosnia/Herzegovina for DebConf11 back on DebConf9 and told me “you have no idea what you just got yourself into” I played cool and said something along the line “of coure I do” and boy did I lie.

During DebConf organization you’re bound to make some of your decisions instantaneously in which you’ll lose something, the most you can do is assess what’s the thing you can “cut the cord” on, even though if that “thing” or a “person” for that matter might have meant something to you. You’ll lose things, relationships, friendships, contacts … at the times sense of humor and maybe even common logic. Some of it comes back to you, some the very next day and for some it may take longer. Some of it was lost irreversibly, but even in that case it wasn’t lost and could even be traced to some other cause.

Official and Final DebConf11 dates in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina are:

DebCamp: 17 – 23 July 2011

DebConf: 24 – 30 July 2011

On behalf of whole DebConf11 team I would like to apologize to everybody who already organized and booked their vacation after initial announcement, reasons why these dates were altered can be found on debconf-team discussion on “Let’s decide DebConf11 final dates“.

These dates will be announced on Debian website as official announcement as well.

This moment has finally arrived! Last Saturday (27-th) on #debconf-team decision was made, DebConf11 is coming to Bosnia and Herzegovina! :victory:

Our team and myself were working on this whole candidature for last ~9 months, and even though we put incredibly amounts on energy, hard work, enthusiasm and everything else that goes along with it, suspense and uncertainty were there until the very last minute! One of our local team members (trip0d’s) wife almost gave a birth to their childgave birth to twins during the decision process that lasted full 4 hours :clap:

As a remainder we were competing with Ecuador and Germany to win this bid, whole process was excruciating and very emotionally distressful in every possible aspect for every team member; at one point Germany took a slight lead ahead of Bosnian team, while in the end by “points” Bosnia was in slight lead by 0.25 points, and this is exactly what touched me the most about this whole bid/decision/process.

This is not a great advantage or anything for that matter, but what happened is that in decision process Debian debconf team and its developers picked Bosnia and Herzegovina as a place where they want to have DebConf11! Our main competitors from München, Germany showed a real fair play and at the end even yielded to our side; really to both of you, Michael Banck (azeem) and Andreas Barth (aba) it was a pleasure and honor to compete with you guys! :highfive: See you in NYC for proper handshake and possibly a hug? :P

Almost all of wiki contents got updated, so please take your time to review it all, once again :heh:

“nü” was more of a symbolic meaning, since in meantime we solved our bids “weakest links” and pretty much got it “mature” and at the stage we were aiming it to be. We’ll still make some minor changes to it until the final decision date (in 47 hours) but this is it really :party: So without further ado, let me introduce you to our nü wiki :announce: Since besides changing pretty much the whole wiki we have also added (important) new pages for:

Today we have received the most important information when it comes to our bid. Today government council sitting was done, where one of the topics was full financial support in case Banja Luka is host to DebConf11. Proposition was accepted! :dance: To remind you, we will get free venue building whether it’s “Government Building” or “Banski Dvori”, besides that we’re getting them to cover basically all of the costs needed for the conference, and besides that we’re getting 5 additional members to our local team (highly capable and educated govt. officials) which even includes city Mayor. Early tomorrow we’ll get scan/fax of this memorandum from Chief of Cabinet along with the local team names which will all together be added to this very wiki page.

Bosnian bid for DebConf11 is Banja Luka, we had wiki page that wasn’t changed since DebConf9 in Cáceres this year. Reason we didn’t have it changed for so long is that we didn’t want to post anything before we had “official/first hand” answers to all our questions. Therefor we present you with wiki page for Banja Luka!

Our team was working (still is) incredibly hard in order to get it all sorted. Slowly but surely we are taking our bid process to the final stage, where we are planing to finalize the actual funds needed for the DebConf11 to take place and … that would be from us :)

If you have any questions about something that wasn’t mentioned on the wiki please do let me know.